The tale had been recounted to her in vivid detail…by Maria, not Harrison, who would rather forget it. “He helped.”
“Pulled a gun, as I heard it,” he said.
“So did half the other customers. And that’s not the only time he’s jumped in to help. He’s busted up bar fights, and shown unruly drunks the door a dozen times, according to Manny.”
He nodded slow.
“Do you think he might’ve come here to watch out for you? Big brother style?”
“I don’t know.”
“I mean, maybe he wanted to get to know you,” she said. “From a distance, for whatever reason. Maybe he has the same twisted-up notions about the sins of the father that you do. Maybe he thinks he’s unworthy somehow, by virtue of his DNA.”
He acknowledged her words with a shrug, and didn’t even try to argue with her or deny what she’d said. They walked side by side to his pickup. The late afternoon sun was blazing its reflection in the chrome bumper, and she had to cover her eyes.
He opened the passenger side for her, and she climbed in.
“I think you should look for him,” she said, when he got behind the wheel and started the engine. “I think you should track him down and get answers to these questions. I think it’s gonna eat away at you until you do.”
He looked at her for an extended moment, given that he was also driving, but he kept the truck between the ditches all the same. “It’s not,” he said. “I’m disappointed but not devastated.”
“Why do you think that is?”
His brows went up. He pushed his hat back farther on his head. “Frankly, Lily, I think it’s bein’ around you all the time.”
She was so surprised she had to clench her jaw to keep it from dropping.
“You have that effect on folks,” he said, easing the truck around a bend in the road.
Her surprise shifted ever so slightly toward irritation. “What effect?” If he started acting like she was her mom two-point-oh—him of all people—she was going to jump right out of this truck.
“Soothin’, I guess.” He sent her a smile that turned instantly to a frown. “Why do you look offended?”
“That’s who my mother was. I thought you said you could see me for who I am, and not as her sainted reflection.”
“I thought I made that clear when I explained the name of the honky-tonk.” He pulled the truck to a stop on the roadside, then he turned, watching her face, and he said, “I want you to consider one thing regardin’ your argument—which, if it were true, would piss me off, too. I can’t imagine how I’d hold my head up if everyone I knew expected me to live up to Garrett Brand.”
“You expect it of yourself,” she said.
“I don’t?—”
“Oh come on. Isn’t that the reason you think you can’t live in the same town with your own family?”
“That’s different.”
“How, exactly, is it different?”
“I—” He looked away from her, then looked back, then shook his head. “We’re talkin’ about you. And how wrong you are about the way I see you. Can we just stick to that for now?”
“Fine. Tell me you don’t see me as some kind of glowing being, beaming light and love wherever she goes.”
He turned fully in his seat, facing her. His eyes moved over her face. He opened his mouth to speak and then he closed it again. And then he folded her into his arms and kissed her.
She was surprised, and then she melted. All her anger just pooled at her feet, and her body went soft against his. She held on tight, and the idea of how upset Chelsea tended to get when folks were late for dinner faded away so fast she couldn’t find it. A few minutes in, he lifted his head.
“I do see you beamin’ light everywhere you go, Lily Ellen.”
Why’d he have to ruin it? She turned face-front and crossed her arms over her chest with a huff, but he was still talking.
